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| Green Card Is Ultimate Prize on Hispanic TV Show | |
| 2004-08-06 | |
| Some TV shows offer an extreme makeover, others a bid for pop stardom. But the hottest reality show in the U.S. Hispanic market is offering the ultimate prize -- a potential green card to immigrants desperate to pursue the American dream. "Gana la Verde" ("Win the Green") has attracted big audiences and hundreds of contestants willing to eat burritos crammed with live worms, jump off high-speed trucks or wash sky-scraper windows in exchange for a year's legal help in speeding up their visa or green card cases. The show, run five times a week on small Spanish-language television channels in Los Angeles, San Diego, Houston and Dallas, was the brainchild of Lenard Liberman, executive vice president of the independent TV and radio company Liberman Broadcasting. "When you are in the Hispanic market, you realize that immigration and legal status is the number one issue ... They want to be able to earn a living and not have the pressure of wondering if they are able to stay or not," Liberman said on Thursday. "We could do a show and give the winner a cash prize, or a toaster oven. But I thought, what would be the ultimate prize for someone living in the United States as an The show started running on July 1 and Liberman said it had been consistently No. 2 in prime-time Los Angeles Spanish language stations. "The response has been outstanding. We have a waiting list. We get letters in the mail, hundreds if not thousands of phone calls, and had people flying in from places like Chicago who want to be in the show," he said. An estimated 2 million immigrants, most of them Latino, live and work in California and millions more are trying to extend or alter their visas to remain in the country legally. "It is a sad commentary ... You can't really blame the program makers," said Alex Nogales, president of the National Hispanic Media Coalition which campaigns for positive Hispanic representation in the U.S. media. "But how humiliating it is, and how desperate do people have to be, to get something that is so necessary to your life and to the future of your children. It is heart-wrenching," he said.
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| Posted by:2% |
| #2 SOURCE Apologies |
| Posted by: 2% 2004-08-06 5:30:47 PM |
| #1 How nice to hear: "The response has been outstanding. We have a waiting list. We get letters in the mail, hundreds if not thousands of phone calls, and had people flying in from places like Chicago who want to be in the show," he said. Of course, NO ONE is to BLAME, perish the thought, especially the ILLEGAL ALIENS who do not respect our immigration laws. What would happen if every immigrant in the world got it into his/her head to jump the queue and sneak over the US border??? Mexico already has a very generous annual quota for legal entry into the USA. Now here's a novel idea. What about if the Hispanic-American nationals went back to Mexico to try and change the racist political oligarchy which has ruled Mexico for the past 100-200 years to make Mexico a better country to live in to give Mexican children a future there? What if Mexicans themselves had their own version of a Boston Tea Party in their country and said "enough!" Instead we hear the same old, same old blameless "victim" refrain from the usual suspects. "It is a sad commentary ... You can’t really blame the program makers," said Alex Nogales, president of the National Hispanic Media Coalition which campaigns for positive Hispanic representation in the U.S. media. "But how humiliating it is, and how desperate do people have to be, to get something that is so necessary to your life and to the future of your children. It is heart-wrenching," he said. |
| Posted by: rex 2004-08-06 5:18:21 PM |